Let him who desires peace prepare for war.

It is a certain sign of a wise government and proceeding, when it can hold men’s hearts by hopes, when it cannot by satisfaction.

Envy is the basis of democracy.

Television has made dictatorship impossible, but democracy unbearable.

Politics is the art of the possible.

Out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing was ever made.

I shall be an autocrat: that’s my trade. And the good Lord will forgive me: that’s his.

If you must take care that your opinions do not differ in the least from those of the person with whom you are talking, you might just as well be alone.

Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them.

What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him your celebration is a sham.

A riot is at bottom the language of the unheard.

Sic semper tyrannis! The South is avenged.

You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.